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Same-sex marriage, the 14th Amendment and Christian hypocrisy

By Scott Tibbs, July 6, 2015

When five Supreme Court justices declared that there is a "constitutional right" to same-sex marriage, they used the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to mandate that the states recognize same-sex unions as equal to the union of a man and a woman. This displays either a shocking historical ignorance on the part of the five justices, or it demonstrates incredibly dishonest historical revisionism.

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed to make sure blacks had equal rights in the South following the War Between the States. It was passed in 1868. Does anyone with even the most basic understanding of American history actually believe that the men who wrote, passed and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment had any intention of applying that to mandate government recognize same-sex marriage and give it equal status to the marriage of one man and one woman?

Come on, now. That is patently absurd. Original intent matters, and using the Fourteenth Amendment to mandate government recognize same-sex marriage is another example of justices writing laws from the bench.

I am losing patience with my fellow Christians on this matter, however. This ruling is just the latest fruit of the sexual revolution, which the Christian church has failed to stand against and oppose for sixty years. It was inevitable that this domino would fall, and more will fall after this one. We will see prohibitions on polygamy attacked, and age of consent laws will come under fire as well.

But this is not the result of an increasingly godless culture. This is because the church has failed. We have abandoned God's standards on fornication, divorce, and adultery. Our churches approve second (or third, or fourth...) marriages prohibited by Scripture, our churches turn a blind eye to fornication and our churches do not even want to recognize rampant use of Internet pornography. Is it any surprise, then, that even many Christians are comfortable with government recognizing same-sex marriage while dismissing Christian objections to it? With all of the hypocrisy, I cannot blame them. I do not agree, but it's understandable.

This is a failure of the church, first, foremost and primarily. We, as Christians, had the opportunity to stand against the sexual revolution sixty years ago. We did not. Our pastors failed us, our church leaders failed us, and our congregations loved them for it. We sowed the wind in the 1960's and 1970's. Now we are reaping the whirlwind.

If we are serious about opposing same-sex marriage and preventing the next steps in the sexual revolution from being enshrined in "law" by the judicial oligarchy, we need to go back to the foundation of Scripture's teaching on sexuality and the purpose and proper place for it. This means that we need to guard the sanctity of marriage against unbiblical divorce, protect the purity of our congregations from pornography and fornication, and repent not only of our failure to stand against the sexual revolution but of the rampant sexual sin in our own churches.

But most of all, we need to pray for revival. The only way out of this wilderness is a supernatural change of men's hearts. That, thankfully, is well within the power of the Holy Spirit.